We are thrilled to share that Amanda Peters’ THE BERRY PICKERS has been chosen as a 2023 finalist for the Barnes & Noble Discover Prize!
The Barnes & Noble Discover Prize is a new prize that celebrates the very best new authors, elevating the joy of spotting fresh voices early on in their careers. Barnes & Noble booksellers have been reading hundreds of debut authors to narrow down to the six books that make up this year’s shortlist. Spanning historical fiction, works of mind-bending realities and harsh truths, equal parts painstakingly tragic and beautiful – these stories have permanently imprinted into our hearts, minds and bookshelves.
Check back on October 30th when the winner will be revealed!
THE BERRY PICKERS by Amanda Peters
A profoundly moving novel told from the alternating point of view of two siblings, this is the story of a Mi’kmaq girl gone missing and the lasting effect it has on her family. Inspired by family stories and written in exacting prose, this gorgeous narrative will linger long after you put it down.
July 1962. A Mi’kmaq family from Nova Scotia arrives in Maine to pick blueberries for the summer. Weeks later, four-year-old Ruthie, the family’s youngest child, is seen sitting on her favourite rock at the edge of a field before mysteriously vanishing. Her six-year-old brother, Joe, who was the last person to see Ruthie, is devastated by his sister’s disappearance, and her loss ripples through his life for years to come.
In Maine, a young girl named Norma grows up as an only child in an affluent family. Her father is emotionally distant, while her mother is frustratingly overprotective of Norma, who is often troubled by recurring dreams and visions that seem to be too real to be her imagination. As she grows older, Norma senses there is something her parents aren’t telling her. Unwilling to abandon her intuition, she pursues her family’s secret for decades.
A stunning debut novel, The Berry Pickers is a riveting story about the search for truth, the shadow of trauma, and the persistence of love across time.
AMANDA PETERS is a writer of Mi’kmaq and settler ancestry. Her work has appeared in the Antigonish Review, Grain Magazine, the Alaska Quarterly Review, the Dalhousie Review, and Filling Station Magazine. She is the winner of the 2021 Indigenous Voices Award for Unpublished Prose and a participant in the 2021 Writers’ Trust Rising Stars program. A graduate of the Master of Fine Arts Program at the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Amanda Peters has a Certificate in Creative Writing from the University of Toronto, and currently teaches at Acadia University. She lives in the Annapolis Valley, Nova Scotia, with her fur babies, Holly and Pook.
Amanda is represented by Marilyn Biderman for her writing and Rob Firing for her speaking.
To learn more about the awards, click here: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/b/books/awards/barnes-noble-discover-prize/_/N-29Z8q8Z2x8u
Congratulations Amanda!